The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board

SAM OWENS | Gazette-Mail WVU's Jaysean Paige (5) and WVU's Daxter Miles (4) embrace in the locker room after a loss in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, on Friday March 18, 2016. The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks, a 14-seed, rolled over the WVU Mountaineers, a two-seed, 70-56. — SAM OWENS | Gazette-Mail
WVU’s Jaysean Paige (5) and WVU’s Daxter Miles (4) embrace in the locker room after a loss in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, on Friday March 18, 2016. The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks, a 14-seed, rolled over the WVU Mountaineers, a two-seed, 70-56.

When this season started, WVU was probably unfairly penalized for being demolished in the NCAA Tournament last season. Never mind it was in the Sweet Sixteen, the opponent was a once-a-generation force and the Mountaineers would take nine players from one season to the next.

The response this year was both spectacular and successful. Being left out of the preseason top 25 was the team’s strongest motivation all season, a season that may have been the best in school history.

And then it ended the way it did Friday, threatening again to redefine a team and all it accomplished.

Against Stephen F. Austin, West Virginia slept and slept and slept. And that nightmare, the Lumberjacks, never went away. So for the second year in a row, the Mountaineers experienced NCAA horror, losing 70-56 to the 14th-seeded Lumberjacks.

No one could probably fathom West Virginia could lose in a more embarrassing fashion than it did in last season’s 78-39 face-plant against Kentucky. But just ask Mountaineer assistant Erik Martin which was worse.

“This one, because I think we could have made it to the Final Four,” said the assistant coach. “Last year, against Kentucky, we ran up against a team that will never be assembled again in college sports. I don’t really do numbers, but this was a team that was favored to win tonight.”

SAM OWENS | Gazette-Mail The WVU Mountaineers quietly sit in the locker room after a hard loss in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, on Friday March 18, 2016. The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks, a 14-seed, rolled over the WVU Mountaineers, a two-seed, 70-56. — SAM OWENS | Gazette-Mail
The WVU Mountaineers quietly sit in the locker room after a hard loss in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, on Friday March 18, 2016. The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks, a 14-seed, rolled over the WVU Mountaineers, a two-seed, 70-56.

That’s how the end of a season looks. For WVU, which tiptoed into Friday’s game after three lousy and ominous practices, it sounds as bad as it looks.

“We practice how we play,” guard Jaysean Paige said. “We practiced like crap and then we played like crap. We overlooked them, and they came out and got us.”

WVU played stretches of miserable basketball and went from up by nine points in the middle of the first half to watching what amounted to a Lumberjacks pep rally late in the second half as the underdog dunked and deked its way to a 16-point lead.

The 10th-ranked Mountaineers, who spent seven weeks in the top 10 and a week ago played for the championship in the RPI’s top-rated conference, headed home after their third first-round loss in seven NCAA appearances with coach Bob Huggins. They were humbled this time by the regular-season and tournament champions of the Southland Conference, who defeated VCU in the first round in 2014.

“I’ve got to take my hat off to Stephen F. Austin,” said forward Devin Williams, who earlier this week accidentally referred to the opponent as Stephen A. Austin, a slip the Lumberjacks caught and embraced.

“They did what they were supposed to do. Their play showed how focused and prepared they were, and we just didn’t take it serious. That’s what happens in this tournament when you don’t take people serious. They just scouted well and soaked in what the coaching staff was giving them.”